The invention relates to three dimensional (3D) scanning of the surface geometry of objects. Scanning an object surface in 3 dimensions is a well known field of study and the methods for scanning can be divided into contact and non-contact methods. An example of contact measurements methods are Coordinate Measurement Machines (CMM), which measures by letting a tactile probe trace the surface. The advantages include great precision, but the process is slow and a CMM is large and expensive. Non-contact measurement methods include x-ray and optical probes.
Confocal microscopy is an optical imaging technique used to increase micrograph contrast and/or to reconstruct three-dimensional images by using a spatial pinhole to eliminate out-of-focus light or flare in specimens that are thicker than the focal plane.
A confocal microscope uses point illumination and a pinhole in an optically conjugate plane in front of the detector to eliminate out-of-focus information. Only the light within the focal plane can be detected. As only one point is illuminated at a time in confocal microscopy, 2D imaging requires raster scanning and 3D imaging requires raster scanning in a range of focus planes.
In WO 00/08415 the principle of confocal microscopy is applied by illuminating the surface with a plurality of illuminated spots. By varying the focal plane in-focus spot-specific positions of the surface can be determined. However, determination of the surface structure is limited to the parts of the surface that are illuminated by a spot.
WO 2003/060587 relates to optically sectioning of a specimen in microscopy wherein the specimen is illuminated with an illumination pattern. Focus positions of the image plane are determined by characterizing an oscillatory component of the pattern. However, the focal plane can only be adjusted by moving the specimen and the optical system relative to each other, i.e. closer to or further away from each other. Thus, controlled variation of the focal plane requires a controlled spatial relation between the specimen and the optical system, which is fulfilled in a microscope. However, such a controlled spatial relation is not applicable to e.g. a hand held scanner.
US2007/0109559 A1 describes a focus scanner where distances are found from the focus lens positions at which maximum reflective intensity of light beams incident on the object being scanned is observed. In contrast to the invention disclosed here, this prior art exploits no pre-determined measure of the illumination pattern and exploits no contrast detection, and therefore, the signal-to-noise ratio is sub-optimal.
In WO 2008/125605, means for generating a time-variant pattern composed of alternating split images are described. This document describes a scanning method to obtain an optical section of a scan object by means of two different illumination profiles, e.g. two patterns of opposite phases. These two images are used to extract the optical section, and the method is limited to acquisition of images from only two different illumination profiles. Furthermore, the method relies on a predetermined calibration that determines the phase offset between the two illumination profiles.